This story is a weird collision my early 90's interests. In college I wrote a crappy one act play called "Fruit Bat Love" which didn't really have anything to do with fruit bats but one of the characters did own one. A few years after college the ebola virus was making big, scary news and I was fascinated. I never read Richard Preston's book, The Hot Zone, but I did read his magazine article on which it was based. I used a picture of the virus as a background image on my first web site, a site which also hosted a copy of "Fruit Bat Love." That site is gone but a few other sites linked to the play (people who actually care about fruit bats apparently) and at least one of those pages still exists.
I still have a copy of that site, I should put it back up on Cognize. It's healthy to embarrass one's self periodically.
Update: I did it, my first web site is back up; bad design, bad writing, liberally garnished with broken links. Enjoy.
Comments (1)
From the article:
"Leroy's research showed that the fruit bats harbored the virus at levels so low they escaped many conventional DNA tests.
Ending the tradition of catching bats for food could significantly reduce the risk of human Ebola infections, he said."
At the risk of sounding culturally insensitive, I'm personally in favor of the bat-free diet and recommend it to all my friends. Of course, I recognize that if I had no other options for dinner, I'd probably be up for a little bat au jus if it's that or nothing.
mmmmmm....batty
Posted by Kevin | December 3, 2005 12:36 PM
Posted on December 3, 2005 12:36